Welcome

to
the website of the
Crystal Palace Campaign

The Crystal
Palace Campaign is a popular movement which has successfully
prevented a 20-cinema multiplex from being built on the
historic, Grade II* listed site in Crystal Palace Park where
the rebuilt (Sydenham) Crystal Palace used to
stand.
We are now
engaged in a dialogue process, which we initiated, to see
the results through to a successful conclusion i.e. an
arrangement in place to allow full and proper
consultation with local people and others
.

- a celebration of music, arts and culture, is turning to local residents in a plea for support to ensure this year's festival remains largely free of charge. "This is your festival now more than ever we can't do it without you!" - Noreen Meehan, Crystal Palace Overground festival Director.

Short report on the ZhongRong-Arup drop-in session held at Anerley Town hall on 1 February 2014 - includes link to video of Arup talk

PARK WORKING
GROUP

Spawned from the work of the old facilitation process, set up by the amenity groups and including local boroughs, councillors, English Heritage and many others, the Park Working Group set up a conference on Crystal Palace Parkon 20th May 2011. There have been important consequences recently highlighted in a Bromley Council press release and picked up by BBC London News.

GO TO:

Link to Call-in Inquiry information

Master Plan Note

[Ed note: Master Plan - about 60 applicants from a world-wide collection of architectural and landscape architects initially applied.This was reduced to 20 by Bromley Council and the LDA. The short list of seven for interview was then generated by a selection panel consisting of a variety of advisory architectural practices and landscape architects and included two members who were from the local community. Following the interviews, this team then picked Latz and Partner as the Master Planners. The Master Plan was delivered to Bromley Council in November 2007.]

A number of items were extracted from the Master Plan and a limited scope defined to conform to the original but at a lower budget. The selection process involved consultation with the local community and others and begins the process of regeneration to the Master Plan blue-print.

Cafe: The starting point was the sketch in the master plan but developed into the current barn-shape which gives a distinct rural flavour to the profile.

A green roof was considered but added to the cost - a stronger structure was needed to support the weight of the roof and there was the problem of maintenance. The high ceiling at the top level, formedby the roof apex creates aspecial barn atmosphere in the interior but will contribute tohigher sound reverberation times. A walkway links the top level and the boating lake (see above image; people in the trees are at lake level and the walkway is on the farside of the building!). All-in-all, this a very good, high quality design in keeping with the budget available, but as always,it will be important to get the details right both in design and construction.

On behalf of the London
Development Agency Robin Buckle delivers the Master Plan
to Bromley Council. The deed was done on the 1st
November (2007), and acknowledged by Bromley Council on 2nd
November. This is the first of three elements of the
planning application - the other two concern 'listed
buildings' and the 'conservation area'.

Bromley will shortly
formally register the document and will then begin the
normal consultation/comment process. Because of the size of
the application (count the boxes!), special arrangements are
being made to view it at Bromley Headquarters and the
process will extend longer than usual simply to give
everyone a chance to read and comment on the huge amount of
material.

As soon as more detail
about the planning registration number, viewing etc. becomes
available it will appear here!

Exciting Moment... This is
the culmination of the Master Planning phase of the move to
regenerate the Park and the result of a vast amount of work
commissioned by the LDA. This phase was one of the most
expansive consultation process of any planning application
of this type. The consultation kept the Master Planners
informed about community aspirations and directly influenced
many of the choices they made. It gave many thousands of
people a chance directly to have their say.

The Crystal Palace
Campaign have always promoted consultation. We initiated the
Dialogue Process more than five years ago and have supported
it since. We will continue to do so in the phases to follow.
Our supporters can be proud of the achievements so far and
look forward to the new future for Crystal Palace
Park.

"There is no city like
London. It is a wonderfully diverse and open city
providing a home to hundreds of different
nationalities from all over the world. I can't
think of a better place than London to hold an
event that unites the world." - Nelson
Mandela...

Consultation document used for the exhibition in the park in 2004 - pre-cursor to the Master Planner approach. This document was added to the page originally reporting on the Penge entrance marquee exhibition. Note the files are quite large since the scanning was at high resolution to be able to distinguish small print and the details on various maps.

MASTER PLAN EXHIBITION BROCHURE - full brochure added to the one-stop-shop - is an excellent description of the whole schem plus some of the rationale behind the decisions and some good (highj res) pictures and plans - large file (86MB); my compouter took about 4 minutes to download, but worth the wait.

GOVERNANCE - a very important issue which needs to be resolved before major works can begin. Who is responsible for Crystal Palace Park? The current owners - Bromley Council? The five boroughs surrounding the park all of whose people/voters/citizens and visitors get benefit from the open space? Some London wide authority? During the formal consultation period, many good ideas were considered and, partially, debated. An excellent presentation was given to the then Park Working Group by David Wythicombe of Land Management Services - January 2008! It has been on our website since then.. but here's a link to re-visit it afresh ...also use the SEARCH page with (obviously) "governance" as the search word.

Some recently published articles relating to the Master Plan decision (etc)-see publications Index:

p170: Residents loose fight.... - this could also have been titled (but with greater relevance!): Residents win fight to regenerate Crystal Palace Park (only the content and pictures would have changed!) - interesting comments from Boris Johnson - Mayor of London

there will be more activity than before later in 2011 including information on meetings, consultation and participation - the more emails we have, the better

For old "Season's Greetings" messages and various other archived
material go to Archive
Index.
First "uploading" of the web site - 4th October 1998. Website moved server - June 2007. Every effort is
being made to keep the contents informative, up to date and accurate.
However... comments on the contents please e-mail webmasterLast updated: 13 January 2016; archived seasons greetings to A47

NOTE: if you don't have the
"frames" of this website up and running, you might have entered this
website awkwardly
click here>>> go
to index.htmto get to the
best screen arrangement.Browsers: these web pages are tested with Internet Explorer
and Safari.Archive: much material is archived - see index - e.g. A18 for Who We Are and Core principles.

-------keep coming back to
this site, it's always changing-----

Sir Joseph Paxton - the
leading photograph above is of a sculpture by W.F.Woodington,
1869: it now stands facing the sports stadium, Paxton's back is towards the
old Palace site! In 1823 Paxton moved to the Horticultural Society in
Chiswick and entered the date of his birth as 1801 - an action which
mislead many an historian. In fact he was born on 3rd August 1803 in
a small village called Milton Bryan a few miles south-east of Milton
Keynes in Bedfordshire. He died on the 8th June 1865 at Rockhills in
Sydenham, south London, having seen his great building, Crystal
Palace, for the last time in May of that year. He was wheeled in a
chair through a flower show and, although surrounded by the plants he
had always loved, he was unable to complete the journey.The bust was cleaned in August 2012.

You are the ...visitor.

Click on the Sphinx to get a higher resolution
picture (it's a great screen background).